- Wildfires raging through the Los Angeles area have destroyed or damaged more than 9,000 structures so far. Fortune spoke with two homeowners who lost everything.
Robyn Migel’s son rushed into her room in the early hours of Wednesday morning to tell her they had to get out. The Eaton fire had reached their home in Altadena.
She grabbed their two cats, and her daughter took their two German shepherds. She grabbed her car keys and some paintings that belonged to her mother-in-law before she passed. But she still thinks about all the things she didn’t take in those 10 minutes of her life.
“We couldn’t get it all,” she told me. “When we were going out to bring things to the car, the wind was blowing so hard…things were flying.”
Her husband, Ivan, and son followed. Half an oak tree collapsed in their yard, pulling power lines with it. It almost hit her husband. Her daughter inhaled a lot of smoke. All Migel could see was smoke as they left. They drove to their favorite Thai restaurant. “We just sat in the parking lot and cried because we didn’t know where to go,” Migel said.
Her husband went back later that day. The home they lived in for two decades was gone, and the trees that surrounded it burned down.
With her home reduced to ashes, not only was her past and present obliterated, Migel’s plans for a future with her family were too.
“I just want to go home,” she said. “For 20 years, we built this home, and we were going to leave it to our kids, and we were going to build this ADU in the back and my daughter was going to move in with her boyfriend.”
The Eaton fire is only one of five fires that are tearing through Los Angeles for the fourth straight day; 10 people are dead, more than 9,000 structures are damaged or destroyed, and thousands are being evacuated. It could cost $150 billion in damages and economic loss. The Eaton fire is inland—and across the city, the Palisades fire is along the coast of California. Both are largely uncontained.
“It’s a nightmare,” Westside Estate Agency cofounder Stephen Shapiro told me, and it’s only the beginning. It’ll take years to rebuild, he said.
Migel’s friend has an apartment in Silverlake that they’re staying at. It’s a tight squeeze with four people (she and her husband are in their early 60s and their children are in their 20s) and four pets.
It isn’t only homes that were lost to the fire. Migel said a McDonald’s, schools, and her son’s favorite bar burned down. It makes her think whether they should rebuild. They have Farmers Insurance but don’t know how much will be covered for a rebuild; at the time of our call, they hadn’t been able to reach someone from the company yet. Migel said they hadn’t refinanced during the pandemic when mortgage rates were low for fear that they’d lose their fire insurance.
She recalled a meeting on Tuesday morning to discuss her finances. She walked away from it feeling accomplished: she and her husband provided for their children, they could retire at some point and be okay. “Twelve hours later, it was all gone, all that security that we had built, it was all gone,” Migel said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Their three-bedroom, two-bathroom home was magic, she said. It’s the only home her kids knew. Her son’s band used to rehearse there, they had parties, Girl Scout meetings—everyone was welcome at planet Migel. She hadn’t seen it yet, at the time of our call, but would soon step in the dirt and maybe get some closure. Her relative started a GoFundMe for her family here.
In the Palisades
Michael Taitelman and his family moved into their home in Pacific Palisades in the summer, more than a decade ago. His children loved it. Hopefully it’ll return to what it once was.
He works in Century City, so on Tuesday, he looked out his window and saw smoke. He called his wife, Lisa, who was walking their dog, and about 20 minutes later, she told him he should come home. Their neighbors were all standing outside talking about the crazy winds. It was very dry, too. Taitelman said they’d been warning about fires, but he thought their home was far enough.
But when the warnings to evacuate started to come, they were casual about it. “We packed our car, but very slowly, and we really didn’t even think we were going to be gone long,” he told me.
They took clothes, some jewelry, photos, passports, and they only packed one of their two cars. The smoke started to creep toward them and they still stuck around for a bit longer before leaving. He and his wife, who are in their late 50s, and their dog went to his office. Then things got worse. Taitelman thought about going back, but it was too late. They stayed at a hotel, but didn’t sleep much. They could see on the maps that the fire was burning straight through their area. The next morning he heard about the devastation.
“I walked up to my house and it was gone,” he said. His neighbor’s house was still standing, but that was pretty much it. “Every single house is gone, every single house.”
Power lines were down everywhere, his house was still smoldering, the rubble was hot, and homes were engulfed in flames.
Taitelman said he’s a person who looks ahead and he still feels fortunate; he’s already called a builder to rebuild his once six-bedroom home, and it was insured. During our phone call, he was dropping off his wife to look at rentals.
“Hopefully we can get it built in a couple of years, but the community is not going to come back,” he said.
(A couple of days later, he told Fortune he didn’t mean it when he said the community wouldn’t come back. He thinks it will be rebuilt and people will return.)
With the exception of billionaire developer and former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso’s mall, the commercial district is all gone: the library, grocery stores, retail. “It’s literally like an apocalypse,” he said.
“My kids are upset, they grew up in that house,” he said. “We’re all upset, and we didn’t take enough with us…it was unimaginable.”
